The silence did nothing to calm Wren’s nerves. Yet he forced his fumbling fingers to grasp the knob and turn.
This door, too, was locked. It took the work of a moment for Wren to pick it. The clicking sounds of his progress against the lock seemed to resound like whip-cracks in his ears in the overwhelming silence of the gloomy stair.
The tumblers fell into place. Wren gathered what small courage he possessed and pushed the door open.
The door swung inward to reveal the self-same chamber he and Shrike had failed to burgle some months past. A slender shaft of silver moonlight shone through the window before the desk, slicing the room in twain with just enough brilliance to distinguish the silhouette of a candle-stick on the corner of the desk.
Wren crept across the room and picked up the candle. The moonlight wouldn’t be enough to search by; however ill-advised, he knew he must risk a candle-flame. No one else in Rochester was awake at so advanced an hour. And with any luck, a passing insomniac would mistake his shadow in the window for Tolhurst. He only hoped, as he struck a match from his pocket and brought it to the withered wick, that Tolhurst wouldn’t notice its having burnt down another inch or two when he returned. Wren would be long gone by then.
Reflections of the pale golden flame glimmered against the glass-fronted barrister bookshelves lining the walls. Wren, candle in hand, went to them and began methodically pulling down books to flip through them one-by-one in case his own manuscripts were tucked between their pages. Shelf by shelf, emptying and refilling, he found they were not.
Still, he held out hope as he moved on to the bedroom. Perhaps Shrike, in his unfamiliarity with mortal customs and manners, had missed something Wren might yet discover. When he’d overturned the mattress, emptied the chest of drawers, and sounded all the floorboards without finding even a scrap of his own work, he felt forced to conclude that Shrike’s search had proved thorough. He ought never have doubted him, though it boded ill for his present efforts.
Wren had saved the desk for last in a half-superstitious effort to fulfil the prophecy of lost items always being found in the last place one looked. In his heart he knew simple logic would show this phrase existed because one would not continue looking for a lost object after one found it, and therefore the last place one looked must be the one wherein the lost object was found, but nevertheless he set upon the desk drawers with button-hook and awl and something akin to hope.
Some time later, the candle-flame had dwindled to a guttering stub. Wren knew its withered state could hardly escape Tolhurst’s notice. He lowered his hopes to merely being many miles off by the time Tolhurst returned. Of greater concern to him at present was the mountain range of piled papers surrounding him as he sat on the floor amidst all the drawers he’d pulled out. Not a single sheet belonged to his missing manuscripts.
The rattle of the key in the lock seemed to fill the whole chamber. The scrape of the door against its frame rang in Wren’s ears. He had time enough to leap to his feet—no more.
“Good evening, Mr Lofthouse. You had a pleasant journey from London, I hope?”
The words held the shape of a warm welcome, yet the sound of them filled Wren with cold dread. He turned to find Tolhurst standing in the doorway, looking not quite as astonished as one might expect to find a common clerk digging through his desk drawers.
Wren opened his mouth intending to reply in kind. “If it’s all the same to you, Mr Tolhurst, I would prefer to arrive straight at the point.”
So much for intentions.
Tolhurst’s brows elevated a fraction of an inch. “Very well.”
His hand delved into his coat towards a slight bulge in the wool that had previously gone unnoticed against the general bulk of his brawny frame. Wren held his breath as Tolhurst withdrew a familiar sheaf of papers tied together with black ribbon. A pang struck his heart, half relief and half anxiety at seeing his work again.
Tolhurst untied the black ribbon with the delicacy of a lover unlacing a bodice. He began to turn the pages over with slow deliberation, as a curator might display prints for auction.
“They are complete,” he said. “Kept precisely as they were found. I’d thought I might have use of them today in London if you proved less tractable than I required in our efforts to discover Miss Fairfield, though I suppose they may serve the same purpose here.”
Wren could feel Tolhurst’s unrelenting gaze upon his face as he spoke. He did not meet it. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the manuscripts. Just glimpsing his work in Tolhurst’s hands brought forth a wellspring of memories, even after so many months’ separation. Every pen-stroke held a story. The illustrations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight sent his pulse pounding with the same indignant rage that had flooded his veins as he stormed out of the Restive Quills. Snatches of birdsong and the babbling brook filled his ears as Tolhurst turned over watercolour sketches of the garden enclosed within Blackthorn Briar. In a drawing of Shrike working at his bench, Wren could smell his vanilla woodsmoke musk, hear the tap of his mallet on leather, and feeling the warmth of the cottage all around him. More intimate portraits recalled still more stirring moments.
“You are satisfied as to their condition?”
Wren, jolted out of his spiralling thoughts, blinked and forced himself to meet Tolhurst’s gaze. He swallowed hard. “I am.”
Tolhurst smiled and withdrew his fingers from the manuscripts, leaving them set aside on the desk. The instinct to snatch the pages and bolt threatened to overwhelm Wren’s better sense. With his hands already in fists at his sides, he dug his nails into his palms to hold himself in check.
“Did Mr Knoll show you where I’d hidden them?” Wren asked in a tone of forced disinterest.
“No,” Tolhurst replied. “I don’t suppose he ever knew your body of work existed.”
Wren hid his astonishment beneath his indifferent mask. “Really.”
“Mr Grigsby’s mention of your particular friends and your frequent meetings at night in Hyde Park piqued my curiosity.” Tolhurst chuckled. “I confess at first I suspected you’d thrown your lot in with the Chartists. Particularly after I espiedWat Tyleramongst your books. But I didn’t begin my investigations in earnest until I returned with Miss Fairfield and found you half under the bed whilst my nephew slumbered above. Then I knew you had something to hide. I waited until Miss Fairfield returned to Rochester, and Mr Grigsby and Dr Hitchingham had left me to nurse Felix alone. As he seemed in no danger, and as your secret seemed very dangerous indeed, I slipped under the bed myself. Imagine my astonishment at what I discovered. Not a manifesto of revolution, as I’d feared, but something I could never have imagined. Something I daresay most gentlemen could never imagine.”
Wren knew Tolhurst did not intend the remark as a compliment.
“In hindsight, of course, it was obvious,” Tolhurst continued. “I should have noticed before had I not been so preoccupied with my nephew’s well-being. I was educated at Harrow. I know full well what some boys get up to there. And what habits some men fail to break when they go on to university.”
Wren said nothing.
Tolhurst smiled. “Tell me, Mr Lofthouse—in all your years of service, have you ever met a boy as feckless as my nephew?”
